Birthday Card

There's just enough time to squeeze in one more challenge before the end of the month, and it's a card challenge, using sketch #44 from Sketch-n-Scrap.

The card's for my Nan who will be 93 on Sunday; her eyesight is failing so I wanted to use bright colours rather than pastels for her card. I used one glittery circle to surround my main pattern and a second one to hold a cluster of punched shapes.  

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper Neighborhood 6x6 Pad
Stickers - Anita's Glitterations, Goldlabel
Butterfly - from a mixed pack of punched shapes

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Woodware Tag Punch

Selfie

The last few pages that I have made from Austria will run chronologically in my 2014 album, but I'm jumping ahead a few days now as I want to use this month's sketch from Susan at Me & Mine before I run out of month.

The photo is a selfie (obviously) that my husband took at the top of Zwolferhorn. It's not a great photo but it's actually the only one that we have of all three of us from our holiday.

There's not a lot of colour in the photo, just the blue of the sky, so I had freedom of choice with my papers. I wanted a patterned background and started by looking through my single sheets (rather than my collections) for one, intending to use scraps for the three vertical stripes on the sketch. I actually found two coordinating papers from Jillibean Soup, one for the background and one with a striped pattern which I could cut up. I layered a couple of mats behind my photo, stitched the circle and added two lines of eyelet brads to it. I repeated the circle with a piece of wood veneer which was still on my craft desk having not been used on a previous page.

We have two children but our son no longer wants to go away with us. They used to get annoyed with me demanding that we all pose for a family photo when we're on holiday, but this is what happens when you forget. 

Supplies
Paper - Jillibean Soup Blossom Soup, Crate Paper DIY Shop
Letters - American Crafts
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico
Eyelet Brads - Pebbles
Embroidery Thread - DMC

Tools
Fiskars Circle Template

Stick It Down - Kaiservilla

I'm rubbish at composing double pages, so I almost always use a sketch. One of my favourite sites for double page sketches is Stick It Down, and I had the sketch archive there bookmarked long before I joined the (single page) design team. 

While we were in Austria last summer, we visited the spa town of Bad Ischl and also Kaiservilla, the summer home of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph. We took plenty of photos, enough for a double page to be necessary, and of course I'm using the current sketch from Stick It Down. I swapped the two photos on the left side for one larger one, and made my stripey paper panels a bit longer so that they reached the middle of the page and I didn't have a gap between the two halves of my layout. I had plenty of journalling, and used paper strips for it in three places around the page.

The assassination of Franz Joseph's nephew and heir Franz Ferdinand was one of the triggers for the First World War, and we visited on the 100th anniversary of Austria-Hungary declaring war on Bosnia. Franz Joseph's war manifesto is preserved under glass on the desk in his study and it was odd to stand there exactly 100 years later in a room which is completely unchanged while the world outside has changed so much.

Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - My Mind's Eye Vintage Charm
Letters - American Crafts
Ink - Docrafts, Ranger
Wood Veneer - Studio Calico

Tools
X-Cut Corner Punch

Stick It Down - Cupcakes Card

I don't normally make multiple cards from the same sketch but this month's sketch at Stick It Down is so versatile that I've used it again. I made two cards earlier this month, but when I unearthed a part packet of cupcake stickers I decided to use them to make another one. 

I actually kept a bit closer to the sketch this time, using nine punched squares and a length of ribbon, rather than the twelve squares of the previous cards. My daughter has her eye on this one for her friend's birthday next month.

Supplies
Card - Craft Tonic
Paper - Docrafts
Cupcake Stickers - Papermania
Peel-Off & Ribbon - from Stash
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
Woodware 1" Square Punch

Singing in the Rain

Another Austrian page today, from the evening of the day in my last layout. Weather permitting, there are free outdoor concerts in Fuschl am See several times a week, and this one was by the Doro Hanke Band on Sunday evening. When the rain started, we thought that the concert would end early, but the band carried on 'Singing in the Rain'. They were under a small overhang on a stage at the end of the school, and the audience were under giant umbrellas/sunshades. It was quite unlike anything we've experienced in England.

I used another sketch from Let's Get Sketchy for this page, the February Week 2 sketch this time, though I used two landscape photos rather than the four squares in the sketch.

The main colour in my photos is purple, so I used dark purple cardstock for the circle and the scalloped border and very light purple for my background. The rest of my papers are fairly neutral including a musical note paper behind the photos themselves. I laid out my journalling on paper strips to the side of the photo, and the words lead into my title.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania
Paper - Sandylion, Lawn Fawn
Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon
Ink - Docrafts

Tools
American Crafts Scalloped Border Punch
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Templates

Fuschlseerundweg

Back to 2014 scrapping (after a brief diversion). I'm filling in the gaps in my album, and I was pretty good with June, just one page missing and that will be my sample page for my March scraplift challenge. On to July then, when we spent a week in the Salzkammergut, the Austrian Lake District. We stayed in a small town called Fuschl am See, about half an hour from Salzburg, and we took a walk around Fuschlsee (Lake Fuschl) on our first afternoon.

I had quite a number of photos from our walk and I recently spotted an interesting five-photo sketch from Michelle at Scrapthology which I decided would work well with them. In the end I dropped the row of flowers in favour of two more photos. I can't quite believe that I got seven photos on a single page.

I do love some of the compound words in the German language, and used one for the title of my page - Fuschlseerundweg is a single word meaning the path around Lake Fuschl. 

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Amy Tangerine Plus One & Stitched,
Letters - Papermania
Labels - 7Gypsies
Ink - Docrafts
Gems - Mark Richards

Tools
Amy Tangerine Date Stamp

Ahoy!

I know. I said I was going to work on my 2014 album, and this is certainly not a 2014 photo - this small boy is now 17. I was rummaging through some papers when I came across a bag containing this photo and these papers. Three options: leave them where they are and risk losing the photo; put the photo back in the album and forget that I was going to use these papers; ignore 2014 and scrap the photo now. You know what I did!

A quick look through the list I keep of sketch challenges took me to the February Week 1 sketch from Lets's Get Sketchy, though it was more of a starting point than a close copy this time.

The photo is my son with the pirate sword, hat and hook that he received for his birthday that year, and the papers that I had pre-selected were from Nitwit Collections and included a pirate boy that I fussy-cut.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill?
Paper - Nitwit Collections Land Ho
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Ink - Docrafts (Brown) + Unknown Blue

Tools
Lakeland Background Stamp
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Stick It Down - Birthday Cards

Have you seen this month's sketches at Stick It Down? Each month we offer you three sketches - for double pages, single pages and cards - and I've been putting the card sketch to good use for a couple of quick birthday cards.

The first one will go to my Mum in a couple of weeks time, and I used coordinating peach, white and green papers from a 6x6 pack to punch out squares and flowers. I dropped the bow from the sketch and added an extra row of squares, layering flowers on the plain squares. I inked the edges and moved the squares closer together, matting them on white paper and inking those edges too to make a border around the outside of the block of squares.

Part way through making the above card, I remembered that I had intended to make and stockpile a few male cards, so I set to work again. This time I used a piece of 12x12 paper with multi-coloured squares on it. I punched squares and stars from six of the colours and layered them up again, using more stars this time as all the pieces were plain rather than patterned. I stuck them directly to the card and doodled a border around the outside this time.

One sketch down, and two cards done. Why not hop over to Stick It Down and show us what you can do with one of our sketches? 

Supplies
Cards - Craft Tonic
Paper - Dovecraft Princess Fairytale 6x6 Pack, Junkitz Rhythmz 12x12
Ink - Docrafts
Pearls - Dovecraft
Peel-Offs - from Stash

Tools
Woodware Square Punch
Woodware Daisy Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch

On the Weavers Way

I've wanted some hexagon dies for a while, and finally got some for Christmas, though it's taken me a while to put them to use.

I'm filling in the gaps in my 2014 album and I've got to our holiday in Norfolk in May. I'd scrapped most of it but I missed out a walk that my husband and our friend did along part of the Weavers' Way. I always find it harder to scrap pages that I wasn't actually there for, but both of them wrote blog posts about the walk so I plundered those for information and photos.

The photos are quite rich in colour so I picked a palette of softer colours for my background, cutting 2" hexagons from a 6x6 pad and outlining them before running them from top left to bottom right of the page.

Supplies

Paper - KaiserCraft Hello Today, My Mind's Eye Quilting Bee 6x6 Pad

Letters - Basic Grey

Sticker - MME The Sweetest Thing

Ink - Docrafts

Tools

Big Shot, X-Cut Hexagon Dies & X-Cut Headliner Alphabet Die

Dovecraft Filmstrip Stamp

Jubilee Greenway - North Woolwich to North Greenwich

I've got a bit behind with blogging my progress with walking the Jubilee Greenway, a 60km path around London which commemorates the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics. I'd got to North Woolwich on 11 January, and picked up the path again nine days later.

By that time I'd made the decision to cross the Thames via the foot tunnel rather than the ferry so that I would have walked the entire route. I entered the 102 year old tunnel via this building, 

bimbled through 

and emerged via its twin 

to be greeted a plethora of signs.

No mention of the Jubilee Greenway among all these, but that path is indicated by markers in the ground. In theory, you simply walk in the direction indicated by the crown, and keep going straight on until you see the next one.

In any case, navigation today was going to be relatively straightforward, just head upstream, following the river as closely as possible; I could see my destination, the O2, in the misty distance.

A gentle start to the walk as I watched the Woolwich Ferry plying back and forth while the planes landed and took off at City Airport. 

I made my way past Woolwich Dockyard, now a housing estate although the Superintendent's Office remains

and a pair of guns have been mounted on the site of the Royal Marines' gun battery.

Meanwhile, the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery is clearly visible on the other side of the river.

Here building works mean that the path leaves the river, though the intention is for the path to follow the Thames once the area has been redeveloped. I followed the interim route through a housing estate and along a busy road as far as Barrier Gardens where I could rejoin the river near the Thames Barrier, opened in 1982 and designed to protect London from flooding. 

The next stretch of Thames is industrial, with aggregate plants operating from Angerstein Wharf and Murphy's Wharf. Nearly three million tonnes of aggregates pass through here each year.

I was entering Greenwich now, and I passed the Yacht Club

then a junk sculpture on the foreshore (possible made by the yachtsmen?).

Nearby was a Polar Sundial - the plate runs east-west with the gnomen in the middle casting its shadow on the correct time.

Ahead of me, I could see the Emirates Airline, the cable car ride across the Thames

and, at river level, 'Quantum Cloud' a 1999 sculpture by Antony Gormley which at 30m high is actually taller than the more famous 'Angel of the North'.

I'd reached the O2, or the Millennium Dome, so my walk was almost over, but I needed to walk round about three-quarters of its circumference to reach North Greenwich station

and there was still plenty to see. Firstly 'A Slice of Reality', a modern artwork by Richard Wilson which consists of a slice of a former dredger. The whole thing is exposed at low tide.

Then I crossed the Greenwich Meridian again as marked by this milepost, one of 1000 posts placed on National Cycle Routes to mark the millennium.

The final stretch of my walk took me onto the west side of the Greenwich Peninsula, with the towers of Docklands on my right 

and the dome of the O2 on my left, just a little too close for decent photos.

I'll try to put that right next time I'm out.

Forgive, Don't Forget

Before the hiatus of February challenge posts, I was working on filling in the gaps in my 2014 album. We visited Paris in April, and I've scrapped most of the photos, but I had skipped over those from the Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation.

It's a memorial to the people of Vichy France who were deported to the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. There are walls of 200,000 quartz stones (one for each person who was put to death) and chambers containing ashes from each of the camps, as well as the grave of an unknown deportee. The inscription on the wall reads 'Pardonne, n'oublie pas' which I translated for my title.

One reason for leaving these photos so long was that I didn't know how to scrap them. I knew that I wanted to use a lot of photos, but I didn't want to put them in a strict grid. I didn't want bright colours, or too many layers. Someone shared a page on Facebook recently (not her own, one she'd pinned on Pinterest so I can't acknowledge the source) during a discussion about grid layouts. That one had several staggered rows of photos, all the same height but various widths, with embellishments at the ends of the rows. Finally, I had my design for this page, though my photos differ in height as well as widths.

Supplies
Paper - Fancy Pants Me-ology, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Enamel Dots - Teresa Collins
Brads - Papermania
Ink - Docrafts
Peel-Offs/Stickers - Old Stash

Stick It Down - David and Friends

February started with three new sketches at Stick It Down - a single page sketch, a double page sketch and a card sketch. We've already shared one example for each sketch and today is the turn of the single page team (including me) to show you what we made of it.

I'll admit that this months' sketch isn't really my thing but I still used it as a starting point for my own page. My printer's out of ink at the moment, so I've had to rely on older printed photos; I went way back to 1999 looking for a single landscape photo and unearthed one of my son and a pile of his soft toys. I keep my 'toddler papers' together and soon picked out the yellow teddy bear print paper which matches both the theme and the colours of my photo. I wanted a denim background paper but I couldn't find one; I think I must have used them all. However I did find a red and blue print that worked really well, matching both colours in the teddy bears.

So, I had the single landscape photo for the sketch, and the flowers on the right became a panel of the teddy bear patterned paper. Then I dug through my scraps for other coordinating papers and layered them together behind the photo. The layering doesn't match the sketch exactly, but that doesn't bother me. It was a few days before I could photograph the page, and at that point I decided that it needed to be matted on red cardstock.

There's a lot of really old stash on this page, including a few things (the brads and mulberry paper) that I have been tempted to dispose of. I'm rather glad that I didn't, and very happy that they are now on a page.

Supplies
Paper - Anna Griffin, Paper Adventures, Simple Stories plus various old scraps
Letters - Basic Grey Curio
Chipboard - Maya Road
Ink - Papermania
Brads - Laura Ashley

Tools
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch

Harry Potter Studio Tour

I published my February Scraplift Challenge a couple of days ago, and I'm taking on the challenge too. My original page had 12 small photos, but my new version has 8 larger pictures.

I made a whole album for our visit to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, but I also make albums for each year and this page will go in the 2014 album as a summary of the day.

The strips on the left are all scraps from making the album. My photos are larger than on the original page, so I made the column of scraps narrower and dropped one of the vertical strips entirely.

Now it's over to you. I can't wait to see your pages. Please link up in the sidebar by the end of the month.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - October Afternoon
Letters - American Crafts, October Afternoon
Washi Tape - The Range
Wood Veneer Stars - Studio Calico
Ink - Docrafts
Mist - Docrafts

January Scraplift Challenge Winner

Thank you to all those of you who took on my Scraplift Challenge last month. I was delighted with the response it received, and it was much harder than I expected to choose a winner. However, I have deliberated at length and avoided tossing a coin - my first winner is ... Amy! 

This is her page, with her boys playing on their computer:

Well done, Amy. Please email me to claim your prize and a Guest Design spot for the March challenge.

February Scraplift Challenge

Thank you to everyone who took the time and trouble to join in with my first Scraplift Challenge. I'll be picking my favourite tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it's time for a new challenge, and this month I've picked a page with twelve (yes, twelve) photos for you to scraplift. However, please don't let that put you off as it is easy to use the same layout idea with any even number number of photos (and some odd numbers too).

This is the original page, which I originally made following prompts in a class from Shimelle Laine:

I've made a new page too, with eight photos this time. I'll be sharing that one with you on Tuesday, so please come back again soon.

Oh, I nearly forgot - we need a new prize. This month I've gone for 6x6 papers from Basic Grey Mint Julep in 10 different patterns, plus journalling cards and a few other embellishments.

Full rules for this challenge are on the link at the top right. Briefly, please make your own version of this page (paper not digital), post it somewhere online and link it back to my blog. I'm trying out the InLinkz linky tool this month, so please add your page to the gadget in my sidebar.

I'd love for you to follow me, but it's not a requirement. It would also be great if you could visit your fellow participants and leave them some love.

I'm looking forward to seeing your new pages this month. Happy scrapping!